A wish of mine has been to combine a love of image making with my love of Leylandagreen. Well, after much time trying to work out how best to do that, the penny finally dropped over a sandwich lunch with one of my great photographer friends — Nuran Zorlu. "Why don't you open up the property for photo workshops?" Gee whiz. Wish I had thought of that! And so that is what is happening in 2017.

Already I have two expressions of interest from very well known — and highly credentialed — professional photographers. I won't mention any names just yet but the great news is that each of them has a different specialty — one in travel, landscape and food; the other in portraiture.

We are still working on dates but anticipate holding the weekends in March and April. And, of course, if they are successful we will look to offer additional programmes across the course of the year. Leylandagreen — and the Southern Highlands — provide much for photographers so we anticipate being spoilt for choice when it comes to deciding what type of weekends we should run. All of this is still very much a work in progress but keep watching these pages for further updates.

And for those of you who don't know much about Leylandagreen a couple of images taken two days ago might help to whet the appetite.